The covenant - James A. Michener [510]
'Detleef, how can you say that?' When he looked blank in the pale light, indicating that he had no concept of what she was talking about, she said, 'The Afrikaners and the English as being different religiously.'
'Well, they are!' he said forcefully. 'They believe quite differently from us. They don't pin their faith on John Calvin. They're almost Catholic, if you ask me.' He trembled again, this time from the terrible force of his convictions. 'And surely God entered into no covenant with them.'
To this extraordinary body of belief, Clara had no comment; her family had developed under quite a different body of faith and had often gone to the Church of England for services when that was more convenient. But now it was time for Detleef to return to the university, and as he held her hand he asked shyly, 'May I kiss you goodnight?' but she deftly pulled away.
'No, no! When I kiss you that's one thing, but when you kiss me that's another.' And before he knew what was happening, she touched him lightly with another kiss and skipped away.
Reverend Brongersma's second lecture was a revelation to Detleef and a surprise to others who thought they knew the Bible. It dealt almost exclusively with the teachings of the New Testament and the nature of Christ's church on earth. It was highly theological, but also intensely practical to those Afrikaners who sensed that with a German victory in Europe, and perhaps in Africa, relationships were bound to be different from what they had been in the past. The audience sat in deep, religious silence as he spoke with that fluid breadth of concepts which would characterize this series:
'I told you last time that the orderly development of our church from the days of Van Riebeeck to the present was a good thing, approved by God and consonant with the teachings of Jesus Christ, and that we must always be proud of the high mission of our church. But since it exists in the bosom of Christ, it behooves us to know what exactly He said about our responsibilities and conduct.'
With this he launched into a patient hour-and-a-half analysis of New Testament teachings, drawing upon the soaring texts in which Christ set forth the essence of his thought. He said, when introducing the focal passage from Matthew, 'If we live in a land with divided populations, almost every question we face will pose special problems which other more homogeneous nations can evade. We cannot, and how we solve these problems of race will determine the character of our existence.' He then read the passage:
'Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.'
He cited so many passages in Christ's teaching bearing on this issue that Coenraad whispered to Clara and Detleef, who sat together, 'He sounds like an LMS missionary,' and none could discern what he might be driving at:
'For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.'
And if anyone felt reluctant to accept this teaching, he threw at them a text which emphasized the message. It came from Colossians:
'Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircum-cision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.'
This led him to what he warned was the key text of his entire series, the noble passage on which a God-fearing nation should build its patterns. It came from Ephesians and summarized, he said, the whole teaching of Jesus:
'There is one body, and one Spirit . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.
'The spirit of Jesus Christ resides in the bosom of every